Clarus

digitol said:

Weak. I hope that's not real. Why does Apple continue to make these highly under-powered, overheating terrible boxes!?  ... MacBook NO! 

Friend, this is a story from 2020, why are you posting about the Mac situation in 2018?

The Fan Speed Overridden message needs to be accompanied by a video clip of Scotty in a little PIP window in the corner, saying "I'm givin' ya all she's got, Captain...I dinna how much more she can take!"

macplusplus said:

ireland said:

macplusplus said:

ireland said:

I’m sorry, but 128 GB hard drive in 2019 is not inexpensive. Reviewer is leaving Apple away too lightly here. Apple should be hammered and embarrassed in the press, until they go 256 GB base on their “pro” Mac portable. Your advice to users is to get an external hard drive or NAS, really? And higher cloud storage requires a permanent recurring fee, so it adds up over time. Add built in store is handier, faster and trumps any external or networked solution. IMO the keyboard is lousy and the storage is greedy and stingy. This is Pro-naemic machine. They gave the processor quad core, but they took away features/size/speeds/ports to do so. We keep getting less computer for our money, IMO.

Also notice, you call this computer inexpensive, but it’s not the model you personally bought, is it? How would you feel about owning this model as your Mac yourself? I wonder how long it was take for descriptors like “inexpensive” to drop from your awareness.

You get a DUAL CPU laptop for $1300 and you still complain? Find another brand like that and come back again..

Quad core.

And no one is complaining about the CPU.

Quad core is the single CPU, the Intel one. The second CPU is Apple’s A10, implemented into the Mac as the T2 chip.

Look, I agree with a lot of your posts, but this one crosses over into fanboyism. No one would consider that the T2 makes the MBP a "dual CPU" machine.

Otherwise, any computer with a specialized coprocessor would be a multi-CPU machine. That is not the way anyone thinks. The CPU is specifically the primary general purpose processor. No third party developer applications are written for the T2. None. It only runs internal Apple routines. Maybe that will change if Project Catalyst means the T2 (as an A10 derivative) is actually being used to run iOS code on a Mac, but until then, the T2 does not count as another general purpose CPU.

GeorgeBMac said:

All good points that you made.   But this is the first time I have heard anybody mention that: (in my words), the Touch Bar requires too much looking and thinking.   A keyboard or any other input device should just get out of the user's way.   Or maybe it would be better to say "become an extension of the user's body" such as you don't have to think about moving your finger -- it's just there and does what its supposed to do without looking at it or thinking about it.   The analogy might be a baseball mitt or bat -- they become extensions of the ball player rather than separate parts to be manipulated.

In the early days of typewriters that was an important concept:   making the keyboard intuitive where the typist didn't have to spend even a quarter of a second thinking about where the key was and they conducted studies to streamline the whole thing and eliminate that 1/4 second --- because it turned out that it made a difference.

I remembered another thing that bothers me about the Touch Bar. The applications that support the Touch Bar will display a row of icons in the Touch Bar. But a lot of times, I have no idea what they mean. They represent commands and options which, on the screen, are either labeled with text, or have a Tool Tip so if you hover the cursor over the item you will get a descriptive label. But as far as I know, there is no such contextual help for a Touch Bar item. Am I missing something?

This new 13" is a major step up from the previous base model, which was only dual core. However, from what I've read elsewhere, this base model still has a single fan instead of the two fans of the higher versions. The old fan was noisy; would like to know what the single fan sounds like under load, the previous base model single fan was whiny and irritating. The dual fans have a more gentle sound.

chasm said:

What the hell do you old codgers actually do with the FUNCTION BAR part of the function keys?

Oh that's right, nothing. You're also apparently ignorant of the fact that your precious function keys are literally one tap away on a touchbar. So sit down and shut up already! Your incredibly productive function keys haven't gone anywhere! #sosickofignorantwhiners #dosisdeadalready

There isn't much true in what you wrote. And commentary hashtags? Seriously?

I liked the function keys, and I used them in several applications that made good use of them, like Lightroom. The Esc key, I used even more, since it is a shortcut for clicking Cancel. I see where the Touch Bar could be quite useful in surfacing and encouraging discovery of important functions for beginning users.

And I'll tell you what. I went into the Touch Bar with an open mind. I customized it using the controls in macOS. I found that in Keyboard Shortcuts, you can make a list of applications where the Touch Bar should appear as function keys. Then I customized it further with Better Touch Tool, to a point where I liked how it was set up for various programs I use. In theory, it was all figured out.

Then I tried to actually use it.

I found that because I'm a touch typist, I'm never looking at the keyboard. I'm hitting keys while I look at the screen. That means I'm never looking at the Touch Bar. And it's not tactile, so if I try to hit a Touch Bar button by touch, I can't do it. I have to do what I normally don't: Look down at the keyboard. Sometimes, it's worth it to redirect my gaze downwards to use the Touch Bar. But a lot of times, it is not worth it. But the net effect is that my wonderful Touch Bar customizations didn't get used because I'm keeping my eyes on what I'm doing on the screen.

But there is another frustrating side to the Touch Bar.

With function keys, if I press a key without looking thanks to muscle memory, it does what it is supposed to do. But since the Touch Bar constantly changes depending on the context, you cannot rely on muscle memory. You have to look at the Touch Bar to make sure that what you are about to hit is what you thought was going to be there, because it might be something else. Plus, you have to look carefully to hit the right button, because you can no longer orient by touch for the four-key groups of tactile function keys.

It is too easy to brush against the Touch Bar and have something happen that you didn't want to happen because you didn't mean to activate a Touch Bar control. With function keys, if you accidentally brushed the key, it didn't depress because you didn't press hard enough; it resists. Well, with the Touch Bar there is no pushback, so if a finger accidentally brushes against a Touch Bar control it is simply going to execute that. And because the Touch Bar constantly changes appearance, if you hit it without looking, sometimes you're not sure what it is you just accidentally set off with the Touch Bar.

So not all of us are old codgers resistant to change. Some of us like change, and cool new things...but only when they're ergonomic and intuitive. Not a shape-shifting muscle-memory-eluding no-feedback Touch Bar.

I use a MacBook Pro but my favorite Mac keyboard right now is the one on the MacBook Air, which no other Mac has: You get a real tactile function key row plus Touch ID, which I find really useful.